[craigs]

Most of what we now classify as dispersed nodes within Boston's modern-day metro were small to medium sized independent cities/towns that existed apart from metro Boston for centuries, but which are today captured within Boston's commuter shed. They were not purpose-built as suburbs of a larger metropolitan area; rather, they were market towns, agricultural hubs, and industrial centers with their own unique histories that were eventually swallowed up over the subsequent centuries as metropolitan Boston grew outward.

In 1900, some 1.9 million people lived in what is today's Boston MSA, or roughly 38.7% of today's MSA population. The region boomed in entire centuries when suburbia as we know it today simply did not exist. For example, a Massachusetts town I lived in, founded in 1653, was initially famous for making shoes and baseballs. It had 9,488 residents in 1900. It's compact downtown area grew modestly as the railroads connected the town with Boston, but it became a 'suburb' of Boston only in the mid 1960s, when the nearby Massachusetts Turnpike finally reached into downtown Boston. That was when developers began constructing modern day, car-oriented subdivisions: the town population grew over 72% in the 1960s alone. The old forests and wetlands that exist in and around the town today were not part of any suburban plan, but are legally protected from encroachment. These areas were never anticipated to face development pressures, being so removed from urban life for their first 200+ years.

On the other hand, in 1900 fewer than 420,000 people lived in today's Atlanta MSA--less than 7% of today's metro population. While obviously there were some small/medium sized independent towns that were similarly swallowed over time into Atlanta's sphere, almost all of that region's modern-day metro was purpose-built, in the last few decades, explicitly as car-oriented, low density suburbs of the larger metropolitan area's job centers. Unlike today's Boston metro, today's suburban Atlanta was always intended to be what it now is.

Although I love numbers as much as any forum nerd, there's more to this comparison than statistical data. That's why people keep pointing it out.